Posted on 08/09/2002 3:38:13 AM PDT by GOPcapitalist
"But I trust I may not be intrusive if I refer for a moment to the circumstances which prompted South Carolina in the act of her own immediate secession, in which some have charged a want of courtesy and respect for her Southern sister States. She had not been disturbed by discord or conflict in the recent canvass for president or vice-president of the United States. She had waited for the result in the calm apprehension that the Black Republican party would succeed. She had, within a year, invited her sister Southern States to a conference with her on our mutual impending danger. Her legislature was called in extra session to cast her vote for president and vice-president, through electors, of the United States and before they adjourned the telegraphic wires conveyed the intelligence that Lincoln was elected by a sectional vote, whose platform was that of the Black Republican party and whose policy was to be the abolition of slavery upon this continent and the elevation of our own slaves to equality with ourselves and our children, and coupled with all this was the act that, from our friends in our sister Southern States, we were urged in the most earnest terms to secede at once… " - John McQueen , February 2, 1861.
Mr. McQueen was appointed a secession commissioner from South Carolina. The quote is from his address to the Texas secession convention
"He claims for free negroes the right of suffrage, and an equal voice in the Government-- in a word, all the rights of citizenship, although the Federal Constitution, as construed by the highest judicial tribunal in the world, does not recognize Africans imported into this country as slaves, or their descendants, whether free or slaves, as citizens. These were the issues presented in the last Presidential canvass, and upon these the American people passed at the ballot-box...Upon the principles then announced by Mr. Lincoln and his leading friends, we are bound to expect his administration to be conducted. Hence it is, that in high places, among the Republican party, the election of Mr. Lincoln is hailed, not simply as a change of Administration, but as the inauguration of new principles, and a new theory of Government, and even as the downfall of slavery. Therefore it is that the election of Mr. Lincoln cannot be regarded otherwise than a solemn declaration, on the part of a great majority of the Northern people, of hostility to the South, her property and her institutions-- nothing less than an open declaration of war-- for the triumph of this new theory of Government destroys the property of the South, lays waste her fields, and inaugurates all the horrors of a San Domingo servile insurrection, consigning her citizens to assassinations, and her wives and daughters to pollution and violation, to gratify the lust of half-civilized Africans. Especially is this true in the cotton-growing States, where, in many localities, the slave outnumbers the white population ten to one. " - Letter of S.F. Hale, Commissioner of Alabama to the State of Kentucky, to Gov. Magoffin of Kentucky
Alexander Stephens, future Vice Presicent of the so-called CSA said that the tarriffs were "just what" the south made them.
Tariffs were not an issue in causing the war. This whole thread is just BS on the part of COPcap.
Walt
ROFL
Walt
Walt
That's a pretty bold accusation, Walter, for somebody who hasn't even bothered to address one single point raised in this thread. Then again, as the historical record of FR demonstrates your clear affection for evasion tactics, I never expected you would in the first place.
Your attempted equivalence is amusing. There is simply no comparison to be made between Sherman's pillage of the south's major cities and one confederate band's burning of a single hick town in backwoods Pennsylvania. Even if there were, two wrongs do not make a right. Your "both sides did it" argument will not buy you any ground against the inexcusable actions of the northern armies against southern civilians.
You are correct to find an extensive source of information on secession there, simply be mindful that it is a representation of primarily the northern side of the argument. With all due respect to the site's authors, that site is more or less designed to argue for the identification of slavery as the issue, and I believe the site even admits so.
While it is an excellent source of documentation for various pro-slavery arguments, to imply those arguments to represent the entire spectrum of the debate is misleading and incorrect.
Notice that you will not find a number of documents there that are often prominently placed among the secession papers. The Cherokee declaration of causes, which barely even mentions slavery but instead concentrates heavily on northern abuses of the constitution, is not there. Nor is the Arizona secession ordinance, which cites the failure of the yankees to equip their frontier as their cause. Nor are any of the other Indian treaties of alignment with the confederacy as far as I can tell. A couple pro-slavery newspaper editorials are listed, but not the many tariff and pro-secession editorials from the same time. Aside from the Davis farewell and a select few of the big southern speeches, very little is there to represent the southern statements during the winter session of congress in 1860-61. Comparatively, Lincoln's major speeches on slavery are all there (but not the one where he says that tariffs are his top priority of the next congressional session). Nor are the winter session's economic speeches to the Senate and House.
There is no mention of the speech where Senator Wigfall, one of the leading secessionists, took up the secession cause in strictly economic terms. Though few know of the speech itself today, it left at least one linguistic on history which I am sure you can identify. Every school child in America has heard its opening line, "I say that cotton is king, and that he waves his scepter not only over these thirty-three States, but over the island of Great Britain and over continental Europe." But more important than historical catch phrases, the speech directly asked the economic question and on the grounds of the economic question, not the slavery one, concluded "I would save this Union if I could; but it is my deliberate impression that it cannot now be done."
The site similarly neglects the major pro-conciliation speeches made by northerners. On the eve of the first wave of secession, Charles Francis Adams pleaded the cause of conciliation before Congress and essentially layed the blame for the secessionist impulse on an anti-compromise faction of northern radicals. The speech was very famous in its own day and circulated heavily in print outside of congress but has since been rejected.
It is things such as this you should keep in mind when attempting to uncover the spectrum of political opinions on secession. References to slavery are there and find plentiful circulation on the web and in the history books. This should come as no surprise as they give support to what has become the official line of the yankee account of the war as well as the position of political correctness. But as any thorough examination of history will reveal, the record is frequented by other causes than slavery that have since been neglected due to their incompatability with the favored line given by historical frauds such as McPherson.
Blind speculation about what would have happened had slavery not occured is little more than an exercise in foolishness, as we will never know it to be so in light of the fact that history simply did not happen that way.
One could just as easily, and perhaps with greater albeit still flawed accuracy, say that if Abraham Lincoln was never elected, there would have been no war. The situation opens up any number of scenarios - had a democrat been elected in 1860, perhaps there would not have been a war or maybe it would have only been delayed until another Lincoln came along and ran at a later date. Had another Republican than Lincoln been elected in 1860, perhaps he would have engaged in greater willingness to stop secession by legislative or peaceful means. Had the south seceded no matter who were elected, perhaps somebody other than Lincoln would have simply let them go in peaceful coexistance. But since Lincoln was elected and did what he did, we'll never know for sure otherwise.
Although the North was opposed to slavery, and to the spread of the practice into the western states, for them the war was about saving the union. As has been pointed out, when the Union was at stake, abolition went to the back burner, to the consternation of the Radical Republicans.
But slavery is the elephant that came to dinner. Without slavery, there is no war to defend it, no secession, no war to save the union. Whether for economic reasons, or any other.
Absolutely, positively correct. This is what confuses people. They hear that the South seceded to preserve slavery, but then they read Lincoln's statements where he seems to not be overly concerned with ending slavery. This is because he wasn't. The Republican Party was not overly concerned with ending slavery, but the Southern states knew that with Lincoln in office, it would, without a doubt, die a slow but painful death. One reason being, unless they could spread slavery into the Western states, the South would be isolated both socially and economically. Plus, the South would continue to bleed runaway slaves into the North and there would be nothing they could do to get them back since the North was ignoring the laws written to return them to their owners.
Slavery was dead if the South remained a part of the US.
The only reason the Emancipation Proclamation was issued was because Lincoln knew the war was won and there was no way the South could come back into the Union with Slavery still intact. After all, this was the reason they left in the first place.
Ironically, the South sped up the demise of Slavery by seceding from the Union. If they had just stayed, Slavery would probably have continued, (in a diminished form) into the 20th century. As a society, we were probably lucky in the long run that the South sped up the demise of slavery.
So you go to Beuvoir and get a glowing portrait of Jefferson Davis. Big freakin' surprise. What did you expect? What kind of portrayal of Lincoln do you think you'll get at Springfield and New Salem?
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